MSGID: 2:221/6.0 603285a6   
   REPLY: 1:153/716.0 02ca0700   
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   TID: hpt/lnx 1.9.0-cur 2021-02-17   
   Ardith Hinton to Anton Shepelev:   
      
   AH> I enjoyed this joke   
      
   Great,  a  couple  more  jokes are on the way that hopefully   
   will not turn out old hats to you, either.   
      
   AH> because I'm interested in how people think &  while  I'm   
   AH> not a techie some of my favourite people are.  :-))   
      
   If am a techie, then I suppose you are a teachie, although I   
   am not fond of eigther word.   
      
   AS>> A programmer's mother asks her son: "Will you please go   
   AS>> to the drugstore and buy us some buns?   
   AH> The larger drugstores around here do offer a limited se-   
   AH> lection of groceries, but in most cases it does not  in-   
   AH> clude perishables.  YMMV....  :-)   
      
   Of  course, it has to be a grocery store. I plumb forgot the   
   word and was further confused by Ilf & Petrov's 1936 account   
   of their journey through America, which received high praise   
   not only in the USSR but also in the  USA.  One  chapter  in   
   their travelog begins thus:   
      
      We stopped in a small town and dined at a drugstore.   
      [...]   
      The  current  American  drugsotre  is large bar with a   
      high counter and rotating piano stools before it.   
      [...]   
      Although the drugstore had  long  ago  turned  into  a   
      fast-food  joint, its owner has to be a pharmacist and   
      to possess, as it were, the scientific education abso-   
      lutely required for serving coffee, ice cream, toasts,   
      and other typical drugstore goods.   
      
      In the fatherst corner of this jolly enterpirse  is  a   
      glass  case  with jars, little boxes, and bottles. One   
      need only spend half an our in a drugstore  to  notice   
      it. In contains medicine.   
      
   But  history  repeats  itself.  One episode of The Heroes of   
   Corona and Arbidol has a gag where the hero says: "I went to   
   the  Post  office  and  bought  a bottle of beer" -- this is   
   about modern Russia.   
      
   Here is a revised intorduction to my joke:   
      
      The mother of a programmer asks him to  go  down  to  the   
      grocery and buy some buns for tea. "Oh," -- she stops him   
      the doorway, "I plumb forgot: if they have  eggs,  please   
      take a dozen."   
      
   Does that sound/read/flow any better than my original?   
      
   AH> Uh-huh.   Mom  speaks  English the way she learned it...   
   AH> and doesn't know how to use techie jargon  such  as  "if   
   AH> exist  goto",  which  would  have made more sense to her   
   AH> son.  I'm reminded of how my  mother  politely  enquired   
   AH> each  year  whether  I  had  "a  very  large  class".  I   
   AH> couldn't get it through her head that as a schoolteacher   
   AH> I had eight or more classes of various sizes.   
      
   I  do  not quite understand the nature of her delusion. What   
   made her think you had a single class? Had it been the  wont   
   and  custom  of  teachers in her own time, or did she misbe-   
   lieve that you were still attending school?   
      
   AH> I am also reminded of a joke in which a woman gives  her   
   AH> husband a shopping list with items numbered like this:   
   AH>   
   AH>       1.  lettuce   
   AH>       2.  carrots   
   AH>           [...]   
   AH>      14.  milk   
   AH>   
   AH> He returns with one head of lettuce, two carrots... plus   
   AH> fourteen gallons of  milk.   In  US  measurements,  this   
   AH> would be approximately sixty litres....  :-Q   
      
   I  must  be  a weak man: I can't imagine hauling this burden   
   back home even from the nearest grocery. Well, may be  haul-   
   ing  *is* the word -- on sledge in winter. As for me, I feel   
   midly reluctant to carrying as little as two  20-liter  bot-   
   tles of drinking water, because I have to stop every now and   
   then in order straighten up and wipe the sweat off my  fore-   
   head.   
      
   Your  joke reminded me of another one involving enumeration:   
   a naked programmer was found dead the bath. The coroner cer-   
   tified  he  died of utter exhaustion. A quarter-full shampoo   
   bottle was clenched in his hand. The instruction on it read:   
      
     1.  apply a small quantity on wet hair,   
     2.  wash it off under running water,   
     3.  repeat.   
      
   ---    
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